The Sydney Film Festival (SFF) and Deutsche Bank have today announced Darlene Johnson as the inaugural recipient of the Deutsche Bank Fellowship for Australian First Nations Film Creatives.
“As a Koori Dunghutti woman I am honoured and humbled to be the first recipient of the Deutsche Bank Fellowship,” said Johnson in a statement. “This is an amazing opportunity which targets mid-career First Nations creatives. I’d like to thank Deutsche Bank for this Fellowship and the incredible Sydney Film Festival for this wonderful and unique opportunity. I also want to express my gratitude to the deadly industry leaders who made up the selection panel.”
The prize includes a $20,000 grant to further develop her skills through professional development or industry placement. Those skills include River of No Return, The Redfern Story — nominated for the Documentary Australia Foundation Award at SFF — and Bluey, winner of the Event Cinema Australian Short Screenplay Award at SFF.
The support of First Nations filmmakers is a strong message from SFF, who launched the Fellowship in May this year. “First Nations filmmaking is very important to Sydney Film Festival,” said Festival Director Nashen Moodley in a statement. “First Nations filmmakers make some of the greatest films from Australia and there’s evidence of that through film festival selections in the great festivals all around the world. I’d like to congratulate Darlene Johnson, a very deserving first recipient of the Fellowship.” Previous initiatives have included SCREEN: BLACK and a spotlight on First Nations filmmakers at the last in-person festival in 2019.
“As Indigenous storytellers, we have so much to share with the rest of the world. We need to forge ahead into the future and become real players in the mainstream industry so we can tell our uniquely universal stories for a global audience,” added Johnson, who intends to use the grant to forge into longer form filmmaking.
As announced last month, SFF 2021 runs from 3 November to 14 November 2021 this year.
